The Missing Dough (A Pizza Lovers Mystery)

by Chris Cavender

  There was no hidden key, though, at least not one that we could find.

  Maddy had leaned over to pick up a big rock when I said, “Hey, I already checked under there.”

  “The more I think about it, the more this looks like a key to me. After all, what does it do but let people in where they want to go?”

  “Well, it keeps people like us out,” I suggested, taking the rock from her hand. “Smashing a window would attract too much attention.”

  Maddy grinned. “That’s your objection? You’ve come a long way, Sis. I can remember a time when you’d never bend a rule, let alone break it.”

  “I admit that I saw the world more as black and white when I was younger, but I’m still not willing to move the line that far back.”

  “Then this morning has all been for nothing,” Maddy said.

  “I don’t know about that.” From where I stood, I could see Bernie Maine’s recycling bin, and best of all, it was full of all kinds of discarded papers. “I wonder what we might be able to find in there if we look hard enough.”

  “Are you willing to dump all of this into the back of your car, because we don’t have any trash bags on us,” she said.

  “Let’s just take the recycling bin. We can always bring it back later, after we’re finished with it.”

  “I was right with you until you suggested we return it,” Maddy said with a smile.

  “I can live with that. I’ll get the car door, and you grab the bin.”

  After it was securely in back, Maddy and I drove out of the driveway.

  At least we tried to, but it was kind of tough when Chief Hudson’s cruiser was blocking our escape.

  Evidently, our presence hadn’t gone unnoticed after all.

  “Ladies,” he said after we parked and got out to talk to him. “What brings you back to our charming little town?”

  “I lost an earring the last time we were here,” I said. Though I rarely wore jewelry, I was counting on the police chief not to know that.

  “Funny, but you’re not wearing any now,” he said.

  “That’s because I’m not a pirate. I took the other one off as soon as I noticed that its mate was missing. It’s true that I don’t wear them that often, but that’s what makes them so special.”

  He clearly didn’t believe me, but he evidently didn’t know me well enough to come right out and call me a liar. “Did you find it, by any chance?”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s a lost cause. Just out of curiosity, how did you know that we were here?”

  The chief pointed all around us at the businesses and homes interspersed on the block. “They have a decent neighborhood watch around here. Someone called me, so I decided to come over here and check it out for myself.”

  “Well, then, that’s one mystery solved,” Maddy said. “Now, if you don’t mind moving your cruiser, we’re going to be late prepping the pizzeria for our customers today.”

  “I’ve never eaten there,” he admitted. “Is your food any good?”

  “It’ll do in a pinch,” I said, refusing to be baited by the question.

  “Boy, you really know how to sell it, don’t you? I’ll see you there sometime soon, and that’s a promise.”

  Chief Hudson got into his squad car, and as he did, Maddy reached in back as nonchalantly as she could and covered the recycle bin with a blanket I kept in back.

  We waved to him as we drove past, offering smiles we didn’t mean.

  “Boy, I’m really glad we didn’t use that rock,” Maddy said.

  “I’m happy he didn’t look in the back of my car. What would he have said if he’d caught us stealing a recycling bin?”

  “Not as much as he would have if we’d broken into the office. That was a good call there, by the way. Things could have gotten dicey. And the lost earring story? Brilliance, sheer brilliance. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so proud of you in my life.”

  I thanked her for the compliments, and then I said, “What can I say? I was on a roll.” I looked in the back and said, “I’m not looking forward to going through that mess, though.”

  “Pull over,” Maddy said as she pointed to an empty parking lot.

  “What’s wrong? Did something just happen that I missed?” I asked as I did as I was told.

  Maddy got out of the front passenger seat and hopped in back. “I’m going to use our time wisely while you drive. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Be my guest,” I said. “Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

  By the time we got to the Slice, Maddy was disgusted. “There was nothing in there that gave me any idea of what Maine has been up to. What a waste of a morning this has turned out to be.”

  As I parked my car in back of the restaurant, I said, “Maddy, you know as well as I do that most of the leads and ideas we follow up on don’t pan out. All we can do is keep swinging and hope we find something that we can use.”

  “I know,” she said as she pulled out the bin. “It’s still disappointing. What should I do with this?”

  “Just put it by the back door,” I said. “We’ll deal with it later. Are you sure there was nothing of value to us there?”

  “You’re welcome to go through it all yourself,” she said.

  “No, thanks, at least not until I’m really desperate,” I said. “For now, let’s go get ready to make some pizza.”

  It was nearly eleven when Paul came by with our sandwich rolls. He made them fresh for us every day at the bakery and gave us a huge discount as well. Usually, it was a bright spot in our day when he came by, but he was clearly distracted by something when he showed up.

  “Paul, what’s going on?” I asked as he put the bread on the racks we’d installed just for him. “Is something wrong?”

  “What? No. I’m fine.”

  “My dad always used to say that ‘fine’ was a bad answer to any question but what grit of sandpaper you wanted. Come on. You can talk to us.”

  Maddy piped in. “Think of us as the sisters you never had.”

  “Older sisters at that,” I said.

  “Hey, speak for yourself, Eleanor. If he wants to think of me as his younger sister, I’m not about to try to stop him.”

  “Maddy, he doesn’t need our comedy act. Something is clearly wrong.”

  “It’s nothing,” Paul insisted.

  “Then tell us about it and let us judge for ourselves. We are friends, right?”

  “The best I could ask for,” Paul answered me. “It’s about Gina.”

  “What about her?” I asked. I knew that they were taking it slow this time around. The two had met in college, but it had fallen apart. When Gina came back to town, they hemmed and hawed before finally deciding to give it another try. I hoped it worked out, but then again, I hated it when any relationship failed.

  “We were watching a romantic comedy on TV last night, and I fell asleep,” Paul admitted sheepishly.

  “It’s not the first thing a girl wants to see when she looks over at her boyfriend and expects to see his adoring gaze,” Maddy said.

  “I understand that, but my hours are so brutal, by eight o’clock I’m completely worn out. It’s really not a good excuse, though, because I know that she works just as hard as I do. That hotel can’t be easy to run.” The hotel in question was quite a bit more than that. Tree-Line was a luxurious complex built on the edge of town that offered a multitude of rooms and had a pretty spectacular convention center as well.

  “So, what are you going to do about it?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know what I can do, but she’s not pleased with me. I convinced her to come into town to have an early lunch with me today, but I have no idea how I’m going to make it up to her.”

  “How early are we talking about here?” I asked.

  “Eleven thirty,” he replied as he glanced at his watch. “Is any place around here even open then? I’m always grabbing a snack at the bakery, but I can’t offer her that.”

  “Bring her here,
” I said, suddenly struck by the brilliance of it.

  He looked at me a bit oddly. “But you’re not even open then.”

  “We’ll make an exception for you,” Maddy said, getting into the spirit of things.

  “I can’t ask you to go to all that trouble for me.”

  “You didn’t ask. We volunteered. Now scat. Bring her by at eleven thirty on the nose, and treat her like she’s a princess. And, Paul? Trust us,” I said.

  “I do,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I’m already feeling better about everything.”

  “That’s because you know that we won’t let you down,” Maddy said.

  I let Paul back out and then locked the door behind him.

  Maddy came out of the kitchen and said, “We’ve got twenty-six minutes to come up with something spectacular.”

  “Let me turn on the oven so it will warm up, and then we’ll stage something nice out here together.”

  “What are we going to serve them?” Maddy asked. “Pizza, as good as it is, isn’t quite what’s called for, for a legitimate apology.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something,” I said.

  Maddy frowned and then said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you take care of the food, and I’ll handle things out here.”

  I really wanted to have a hand in the prep work in the dining room, too, but she was right. I had to get cracking if I was going to come up with something good enough for our special guests.

  “Okay, it’s a deal. Make it special.”

  “Right back at you,” Maddy said with a grin.

  We were in business. I just hoped that whatever we could come up with wouldn’t disappoint them.

  I started digging through my cookbooks, searching for something really special I could make with the ingredients we had on hand. Thankfully, the pizza dough was finished, so I wouldn’t have to use anything that had been refrigerated. Now I just had to figure out what I was going to make. As I flipped through the stack of cookbooks I had, I found and then immediately rejected recipe after recipe that I didn’t feel was good enough for the occasion. A quick glance at the clock showed me that I had only eighteen minutes left, though. Just in case my new recipe didn’t work out, I made a simple cheese pizza and put it on the conveyor. That way if disaster struck, I’d have something to offer them. But it wasn’t going to be my lead, if I could help it.

  Blast it. Most of the fanciest recipes called for ingredients I didn’t have on hand. I was going to have to make do with what I had.

  I grabbed more dough, cut some of it into strips, and then I worked grated Parmesan, mozzarella, and a little cheddar into it all before making a braid, just for fun. I put that on a pan and sent it through the oven and then started on small individual-size dessert pizzas. After I pulled out the cookie crusts that I had made ahead of time and kept on hand, I made one with cherry pie filling and the other with apple pie mix, since I didn’t know what they liked. It wasn’t nearly as elegant as I would have liked to offer them, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.

  At least they wouldn’t starve, and I saw that I’d be pulling the first pizza out two minutes after they walked in the door.

  I went into the dining room and clapped with delight the second I saw what Maddy had done. She’d pulled all of the tables away from the center of the restaurant until she had one place set apart from all of the rest. Instead of our standard tablecloth, she’d found something that looked elegant in its simplicity. Two new place settings were on the table, and a bud vase in the center held a single red rose.

  “How did you do all of this in the time I was in back?” I asked in awe.

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s amazing,” I said. “You’ve outdone yourself, Sis.”

  “Thanks. I was going to return the place settings, so I already had them in my trunk, along with some fabric I was thinking about making a new dress out of. It looks stunning as a tablecloth, don’t you think?”

  “And the rose?” I asked with a grin.

  “We were in luck there. I found Hiram Blankenship standing on the promenade, giving them away to whoever wanted one.”

  “I didn’t realize that it was his anniversary already,” I said.

  “Neither did I, but the man’s like clockwork year in and year out.”

  Every year on the anniversary of his wedding to his late wife, Melissa, Hiram bought twelve dozen red roses and handed them out to everyone he met that day. It was sweet, sad, romantic, and a bit tragic, all rolled up into one act of remembrance that never failed to make me cry.

  “You really did great,” I said and gave my sister a big hug.

  “To be honest with you, it was kind of nice to get my mind off of murder, even if it was only for half an hour. How did you do?”

  “Not nearly as well as you did,” I admitted.

  I was about to tell her what I’d made when there was a tap at the front door. Paul was there with Gina, and he looked so pleased to be with her that I hoped it worked out between them.

  “You two shouldn’t have gone to this much trouble,” Gina said after we shared our hellos and they came into the Slice.

  “For two of our dearest friends? It was our pleasure. If you’ll be seated, we’ll be serving the first course soon,” I said.

  She turned and looked at Paul. “I still can’t believe that you planned all of this just for me.”

  He was about to confess his part—I could see it in his eyes—so I broke in. “It didn’t surprise us one bit. Paul always has had a romantic spirit.”

  He just laughed, and then he explained, “It’s true that I wanted to do something special, but these two ladies deserve all the credit for today.”

  “It’s sweet of all of you, then,” Gina said.

  I excused myself, pulled the pizza and the cheese sticks out of the line, and then prepped them to serve. As I walked back out, Maddy was getting them sodas, so I served them myself. “I hope you enjoy our humble offerings. Save some room for dessert. I’ve got cherry and apple dessert pizzas.”

  “Thank you,” Paul said. “I mean it.”

  “You’re most welcome.”

  Maddy followed me back into the kitchen. “I thought I’d give them some privacy,” she said as she opened the door enough to watch them.

  I grabbed her apron and pulled her backward away from the door.

  “Hey, what if they need something?” she protested.

  “I have a hunch that they’ll be fine on their own. This is nice, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “We should do something like this for our men when things settle down around here.”

  “Do you ever think that’s even a possibility?” I asked.

  “I have my hopes. After all, if we can’t solve Grant’s murder, then surely Chief Hurley can manage to do it without us.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said as I started applying icing to the dessert pizzas. I slid them both back into the fridge, and then I started cleaning up. Maddy lent a hand, and by four till noon, we were ready to face the world.

  “Could you go ask them if they’re ready for dessert?” I asked.

  I didn’t have to ask Maddy twice.

  She came back fifteen seconds later. “They want both of us out front.”

  I was curious, so I joined Maddy to find out what was going on.

  Paul and Gina were both standing, and I was pleased to see that they were holding hands. “No room for dessert?” I asked.

  “We’re stuffed,” Gina said, and then she hugged me. As she did, she whispered in my ear, “Thanks, Eleanor, for everything.”

  “It was my pleasure,” I said before she broke free.

  Paul thanked us, as well, and after they were gone, Maddy and I tackled cleaning up the table and putting everything back into order for our paying customers. She pointed to the cheesy braid of bread and asked, “Did you pull that out of some fancy cookbook?”

  “Nope. I take the full blame for it,” I admitted. �
��I made it up on the spot.”

  “Well, it looks great. I don’t suppose there are any more back there, are there?”

  “Why don’t I make us another batch?” I suggested.

  “That sounds wonderful,” she said.

  Everything was finally back in order, and I had started to unlock the front door when I saw Paul hurrying over to the pizzeria.

  I opened the door and asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “You need to get inside,” he said as he brushed past me and went into the pizzeria. Oh, no. Had something I served them made them sick? I’d hate myself if I ruined their lovely little meal together.

  Once I was back in the Slice with Maddy, Paul looked at us both and grinned. “Boy, I never would have believed that it was possible, but you both got me out of the doghouse. That was nothing short of spectacular.”

  “We’re glad you’re pleased,” I said.

  “That doesn’t begin to describe it. Now, what do I owe you? I walked out of here on air, and I didn’t realize that I forgot to pay you until Gina reminded me a minute ago.”

  “Thanks for offering, but this one was on the house,” I said as Maddy nodded her agreement to my offer.

  Paul frowned. “Hang on a second. I never meant you to do all of this for nothing.”

  “Don’t you think we know that, Paul?” I asked as I hugged him. “We meant every word we said. You’re like family to Maddy and me. We won’t take your money today.”

  “Okay, but this means that I can bring you treats and confections whenever I feel like it, and you’re not allowed to ever say no.”

  I thought for a split second about protesting when I envisioned what my waistline might end up looking like, but I knew that I had to be careful how I responded.

  Fortunately, Maddy filled the silence. “Score,” she said to me. “I told you that my little plot would work, Eleanor. Free desserts. Wee!”

  “She’s just teasing,” I told Paul.

  “Or am I dead serious?” Maddy asked with a grin.

  Paul just shook his head. “If we really were related, I couldn’t ask for a better pair of cooks to be kin to.”

  “We know exactly what you mean,” I said. “Now, don’t you have a bakery to run?”